John Hanson

John Hanson was born in 1721 in Charles County, Maryland, into a family that had been established in the colony for three generations. He spent his adult life as a tobacco planter and local official, accumulating the experience of county governance that shaped his understanding of how public institutions worked and how they could be made to function effectively. By the time the revolutionary crisis matured in the 1770s, Hanson was already in his fifties — an older man by the standards of the era — but his long service in colonial Maryland's courts and assembly had given him exactly the kind of steady, experienced judgment that revolutionary committees and conventions required.

Hanson served in the Maryland legislature throughout the war years, supporting the Continental Army's requisitions and working to keep Maryland's contribution to the common cause as strong as possible. His son fought in the Continental Army, giving him a personal stake in the conflict that went beyond politics. In 1779 he was elected to the Continental Congress as a Maryland delegate, arriving in Philadelphia at a moment when the Congress was attempting to put its governmental arrangements on a more stable footing. When the Articles of Confederation were finally ratified by all thirteen states in 1781, the Congress reorganized under its terms, electing a President of Congress to serve as the presiding officer. On November 5, 1781, John Hanson was elected to fill that role — the first person to serve in that office under the formal governmental structure that the Articles established.

The claim, advanced most vigorously by Maryland partisans, that Hanson was therefore the first President of the United States has always been contested. The office he held was not the executive presidency created by the 1787 Constitution; the President of Congress under the Articles was a presiding officer and ceremonial head, not a separately elected executive with independent powers. Nevertheless, Hanson's election in 1781 represented a genuine milestone — the first operation of the formal national government that the states had labored for years to bring into being. He served one year in the role before the term-limited office rotated to another holder, and he died in 1783, before the Constitution replaced the governmental structure he had helped inaugurate.